Thursday, April 20, 2017

Night and Day (1946) and De-Lovely (2004)

Night and Day (1946) and De-Lovely (2004), both about the life
and career of Cole Porter, are equally entertaining and equally artificial.

This
is the last entry in our series in musicals about composers. Cole Porter was a difficult subject to tackle
for these films, but not solely because of the subject of his homosexuality –
which was not explicitly discussed in Nightand Day – but because Cole Porter was a complex individual who, maybe more
than other composers and lyricists we’ve discussed in the series, really was
his music.

Unlike
the other composers we’ve covered, he wrote both the music and the lyrics to
his songs – wickedly clever and complex, so intricately and perfectly joined. It was a perfect marriage. But both movies dwelled more on his other
marriage.

Night and Day, directed by
Michael Curtiz, stars Cary Grant as Cole Porter, and Alexis Smith as Linda Lee,
his wife.Monty Woolley, who was a lifelong friend,
played himself, as does Mary Martin. Others
presenting songs but playing fictional characters are Jane Wyman, Ginny Simms,
and Eve Arden.Early scenes in the film
depicting how Cole and Linda met and their World War I adventures are
fictional. Cole's leading cheers at Yale is not as spurious as we might think –
he was very prolific in his music in college and did create fighting songs
still used at Yale today.

The
musical numbers are staged in a style of the 1940s – leisurely, lavish, and
glamorous. There is much visually in the
movie to appeal to the eye, most especially leads Cary Grant and Alexis Smith. Linda is supportive of his career and
encouraging, but eventually feels neglected when his work pulls him away from
her. There is a strange aloofness in Grant’s
portraying of Cole – which may be a veiled intention to refer to his
homosexuality. It’s a line this 1946
film is obviously not going to cross.

De-Lovely deals with that
subject in a very warm and gentle way. Cole’s liaisons with men are a drain on his
marriage when Linda, who otherwise accepts Cole for who he is, feels he is
being too indiscreet, but this film is frank about their love for each other as
much as about his extramarital liaisons. Cole and Linda genuinely are devoted to each
other; to dismiss her as only a marriage of convenience is to not do justice to
their real and enduring bond. (The exact
nature of their sexual relations is illustrated by suggesting they have at
least occasionally shared a bed and that Linda has become pregnant after they
decide they would like to start a family; she afterwards suffers a miscarriage.)

Cole
here is not aloof and strangely cold as was Cary Grant, but he is often so
immersed what interests him that he displays only the most fleeting sensitivity
for others: his liaisons are demonstrated as casual brief encounters with male
prostitutes arranged for him by friends – not loving relationships. There
appears to be little feeling behind his appetites, even his music is presented less
as a passion and more as another hedonistic urge.

Perhaps
this is the difficulty at the root of presenting the life and work of Cole
Porter on film; and both movies dance around it.

Pop
singers perform the Porter hits: Robbie Williams, Elvis Costello, Alanis
Morrissette, John Barrowman, Sheryl Crow, Diana Krall, and Natalie Cole among
them. None of the singers perform in the style of the 1940s, though Krall as a
jazz singer and Natalie Cole as an interpreter of the American Songbook have a
leg up on the others. The songs are
presented in a kaleidoscope of images always shifting, always moving, somewhat
off-kilter – as the movie is actually a kind of dream sequence – as Cole Porter
looks back on his life in the form of a musical. We do not hear most of the
songs in their entirety, which is a shame, but the use of the songs within the
framework of the narrative is so creative that it doesn’t seem distracting
to have this modern style interpretation. If anything, it may bring a younger generation
to appreciate Cole Porter’s music. (Although
director Irwin Winkler does use an Ethel Merman impersonator for “Anything Goes.”)

Jonathan
Pryce, who plays Gabe, or the Angel Gabriel, ushers Cole Porter through his
personal life musical and also launches the cast in an exuberant “Blow, Gabriel,
Blow” as a finale. This and the
whimsical number on the movie studio lot featuring, among others, Louis B.
Mayer singing and dancing to “Be a Clown” are entirely fanciful and do not
match the “realism” of the other musical performances.

In
De-Lovely, Linda and Cole meet in
Paris in the 1920s, which is true, and their exploration on how far Cole’s
music, his “promise” will take them brings us to Broadway and Hollywood, and
the tragedies of Cole’s crippling horse riding accident, as well as Linda’s
illness and death from emphysema.

Perhaps
the greatest similarity between the films is the several cigarette cases Linda gives
Cole one for each of his new shows, with an appropriately themed design
engraved, and also the fact that his equestrian accident nearly killed him and
left him physically handicapped for the rest of his life.

De-Lovely gets closer to
the mark depicting the terrible toll the accident took on him, when both his
legs were crushed, but neither film explores the decades-long pain, suffering,
multiple operations, eventual amputation in so far as what it was like for a
man who created lighthearted, playful lyrics, who seems to take nothing
seriously – to still be able to create, as he did, under terrible
circumstances. It was after he lost Linda that most of his music and his
delight in life left him. He ended his
days as a recluse.

Neither
film covers more than but a handful of his songs.

De-Lovely acknowledges Night and Day with a brief clip which
Cole and Linda watch in a Hollywood studio projection room – without much
enthusiasm. We are shown the final scene
when Cary Grant as Cole, stiffly walking on crutches, reunites with Linda,
played by Alexis Smith, at a celebration of his work. Radiant Alexis
rushes towards him. He mechanically puts
his arms around her, but stares over her shoulder with an enigmatic, almost
grim expression.

Kevin
Kline and Ashley Judd watch as Kline says, “If I can survive this movie, I can
survive anything.”

“Why
on earth does Linda come back to Cole anyway?” she asks.

“Because
he’s Cary Grant.”

“We
should be grateful to them. They found
us a happy ending.”

But
Cary doesn’t really look happy in that scene; it is a most unromantic ending.

De-Lovely concludes with
Cole and Linda, elegant and young again, reunited in the hereafter as darkness
falls over the city out the window of their apartment and the gentle strains of
“In the Still of the Night” wash over them.

Which
film is more true? They both are true,
and they both are fictional, and I like each for what it is.I do not regard De-Lovelyas a replacement for Nightand Day, it is just a revisiting of the story.

During
this series about musicals we’ve discussed the sometimes fractious collaboration
of a composer and lyricist. Here we have
both in one man. He was delightfully,
impossibly, maybe tragically schizoid, and neither film comes close to
exploring or explaining his genius. It
was too private and too personal and beyond description.

***

Next
week, I’d like to share a few thoughts on the series Feud and how modern filmmakers and a modern audience look back on
the relationship between Bette Davis and Joan Crawford.

4 comments:

I recall upon the release of De-Lovely how disappointed I was with the pop singers attempts at Porter's music. While, as you say, Krall and Cole "got it", the others of the younger generation seem not to grasp how to interpret his sophistication. There really is a divide. In singing Porter, you should be able to throw yourself into those lyrics imagining that it is you, and not the composer, who is the smartest person in the room.

I love this: "In singing Porter, you should be able to throw yourself into those lyrics imagining that it is you, and not the composer, who is the smartest person in the room." As usual, you nail it, CW.

I'm not really fond of either of these films, Jacqueline. I think the ultimate Cole Porter bio/film still needs to be made. But I don't think anyone today (outside of us, obviously) would know know to go about 'getting' the thing done right. Most 'modern day' actors wouldn't know what to do with sophistication if it bit them on the nose. At any rate, I copped out of DELOVELY after about a half hour or so. (And I normally love Kevin Kline) :( But I bow to your movie smarts, Jacqueline. Another terrific post.

Thanks, Yvette. Most people prefer one or the other, but I can see your point that the ultimate Cole Porter film may still be waiting to be made. If it can be done. I do think it will require leaning more on his music and his lyrics than on his private life, because you just can't fit everything in and one or the other or both, is always sacrificed.

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Recent Comments on Past Posts:

It Happened to Jane is special to my family. My mother was selected to play the wife of Aaron Caldwell, the Chester town selectman in the movie and has a speaking part about the parking meter revenues gathered from outside his general store in the town center. My older brother was one of the cub scouts delivering coal donated by town residents to fuel Old 97. We grew up in Deep River. A few years ago a niece provided every member of music family copies of It Happened to Jane on DVD. The Connecticut River valley was truly an idyllic spot for growing up in the mid-Twentieth Century!

Thank you, the Lux Theatre broadcast was absolutely marvelous, and far superior, as you have indicated, the film. I have always admired Dorothy McGuire, and she has it all over Jean Peters. This is not as clear cut a differential between Joseph Cotton and Dan Dailey, but at this point in their grand careers, I will take Dan. Again thank you.

I jus watched this and I have to agree... the ending let me down. She left Howard Keel!!!! I've had a crush on him since seeing Seven Brides when I was 10.I did love the message that Rose Marie can be herself.But I'm still sad. Seriously, Rose Marie, you chose the wrong man.

My wife and I go back two decades for our love of “Remember the Night” and its heartwarming story...P.S. As I type these words I am reminded of the inscription my wife had engraved inside the wedding ring I now wear… “Remember The Night.”

Beautiful piece, Jacqueline, about yet another movie from the Unjustly Forgotten file. I agree a video release is decades overdue, (What is wrong with Universal Home Video? You'd think the only movies they ever made were monsters and Abbott & Costello. And don't even get me started on the pre-'48 Paramounts they're sitting on.) I count myself lucky to have scored a decent 16mm print on eBay some years back; otherwise it would have been a good 40 years since I saw it.

I happened upon this piece and wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed reading it. Really a great appreciation of a wonderful movie. Raoul Walsh is one of my favorite directors and this is the first of his movies I ever remember seeing--it was on the big screen back in 1952 so I guess that dates me but a movie like this was ideal for my age, both for the adventure and romance.

I guess I'm going to be busy reading all your blogs that touch on events I'm familiar with.

Judgement At Nuremberg caught my attention as I had the privilege of working in it for some 60 days. But more so as the German WWII history always recall my own trials during the war.

I suppose we filmed this around 1959-1960 which is not that long after the ending of the war. Reconstruction in Europe was far from accomplished. For the audience in 1961 this history was still a part of everyone's life.

I was overwhelmed sitting in that set and listening to the greatest actors of that generation orate day after day... an endless live theater.